moar humorous pics

It’s Valentine’s Day. You miss me? Yeah, I miss you, too. The picture above is more for my wife and I, but if you need a hug, take one. I gotz a jar full.

I’ve been pretty sick since the Supe… uh Big Game uh football game played on Feb 2. (Do you know what to call it without NFL lawyers suing you for trademark infringement?). I almost went to a doctor. Seriously.

Good news is that I do not have pneumonia and that one day, I really will feel better. Brother Bear is pulling out of his version of this virus as well as Dancing Bear. Besides being 1 below zero tonight things are looking pretty good. (We celebrated reaching 30 degrees this morning!)

Here’s what else has been going on.

Some folks from Springfield, Mo wrote the church administrator and asked about the look and feel of our website. They asked for help in finding the same template we were using at the time. Of course, since I maintain the website, I was put in touch with them and the rest is history. They are now sporting a WordPress site.

I noticed that their web guy found a beautiful theme from LivingOS.com that provided a slideshow. Believe it or not, the slideshow is NOT powered by Flash(R). Like their web guy, the only issue was the green and yellow color scheme. Not ugly, just not the color palette we were looking for. They are still working on theirs, but I had a chance to tweak it a little bit. Now the church I attend is sporting a new website, too. I’m going to tweak the red and yellow buttons a bit, but I’m happy with it.

Along those lines, I’m working on committees for three upcoming events. First is Black History Service on Feb 24. I hope to have a video up on the site that we will be using for service. Second is the Men’s Retreat. That’s in early March. No cool link to it, yet, but we’ll see. Since I’m on the committee, it’s probably not going to be one of those Wild-at-Heart-Let’s-Act-Like-We’re-Five events. At this point, we’re thinking of having a loud track and a silent track. The silent track is for those that want to unplug and be with God. They will have outdoors and more meditative group things. The loud side will be for those that need a passionate setting to inspire them. Not really rah rah, but real. Everyone, of course, will be together Sunday morning and Saturday morning for football/Capture the Flag. After that, is Easter Service, complete with special songs and dramatic presentations. I’m doing the programs because I will be in NC on Easter Sunday.

Speaking of Easter, I’ve been invited to give the closing Benediction at the Sunrise Service at home. I really hope to get there in time to do that.

Also speaking of Easter, we celebrated Ash Wednesday last Wednesday for Men’s Midweek. This was the liturgical service complete with the ash mark on the forehead tradition. It was quite beautiful and inspiring to many there. A few seemed offended, but most of us, especially me, really enjoyed it. It was the first church service in a long time where I felt something instead of learned/blocked-out-wrong-information something.

Other than that, I am involved in a Statis-Pro Football by internet group based out of Virginia. My team, the Nebraska State Armadillos, are looking to draft a star quarterback to lead the team to victory.

I know, it’s sick what you can do with public domain images these days. (Thanks WPClipart!)

I’m also working on more stuff for my Sycarion site. Things there are moving along well. I discovered a tool called yould that has sped along the creation of the Lenga language. Lenga is a relex of Latin. Basically, it follows all the grammatical rules of Latin, but the words are different. I’m at the stage where I’m going through the vocabulary list (17,000+plus words!) and checking for internal consistency. It’s enough at this point to use for adding flavor to descriptions of the Bedrian Empire, Dira (the world), and names of common objects.

The Football project is on hold while I play football as I mentioned earlier. Since my game is based on Statis-Pro and I haven’t played against a human being in years, I figure this is a good time for a refresher. One of the coaches lives in my area, so I will play a few games “in person” instead of through IM chat.

Lastly, I did cave once a couple weeks ago. I went to the Civil Discussion Forum at Delphi. It took five minutes for me to realize that I didn’t miss it. I also asked someone for a copy of an article that Gordon wrote about Christianity and Psychology. I knew what it would say. It would say that Psychology is incompatible with Christianity. Get a lot of advice for mature disciples before visiting a therapist (in practice, this means “get others to talk you out of it”).

You have to understand that the ICoC comes from a strong tradition of nouethic counseling. The Scriptures are sufficient for any problem in a believer’s life and each Christian is competent to counsel another Christian because of the completeness of God’s word (and not the abilities of the individual believer). It sounds very good, and I believe that it is possible to some degree in everyday problems and facing common challenges. I think we can help each other raise our children. However, combine this with the Shepherding ideas from the Ft Lauderdale Five, and this man and you get something entirely different.

From Nouethic Counseling, you got the mistrust of Psychology (See PschyoBabble and Competent to Counsel and this article). From Mumford and company, you get that obedience is the highest form of worship. From Kip, you get the boundless energy of someone that knows he is the star of the show. Almost thirty years later, the fallout from the ICoC and others groups is still happening. We weren’t the only group to take the worst aspects of both of these good-intentioned ideas.

Now take the architect of the ICoC’s discipling system (Gordon). He wrote the book on discipling (now discontinued from DPI). He was a Kingdom Elder. Considering his experiences, training, and methods over five or more decades, it’s no surprise that Pyschology is not to be trusted.

I understand wanting to guard the heart from worldly ideas. I quit listening to talk radio. I will not watch Oprah. I generally avoid the incendiary aspects of the blogosphere (although I have been one of those incendiary folks). However, any system that has a built-in fear of outside ideas is ultimately going to collapse on itself. Mumford’s group did it. We did it. UBF did it (and still is doing it). When I consider that the perfect love of God drives out fear, I hope to allow God to be the filter of new ideas. I hope that I do not give into fear so much, that I set up an artificial rule saying that any new idea is probably ungodly. (I also do not want to embrace every new idea at the cost of ignoring God’s loving guidance.)

My experience with a secular counselor has shown that a “take every thought captive” approach works very well for day to day problems. I’m going through a workbook with practical exercises that demonstrate some of the thoughts I entertain that separate me from those I love. For the bigger issues, like abuse, there is a way to determine what is magnified by my perceptions and what was genuinely wrong. More importantly, there are ways to find closure or acceptance.

In any case, I hope to avoid articles like this in the future.

True my life is busy, but I feel that it is starting to have meaning again. I didn’t say purpose, it’s not the same thing. Meaning, however, is just as important. I find meaning in my game stuff and website stuff. I find meaning in raising the children (even if I am the only one not doing the Raising Kids God’s Way stuff). I find meaning in making my wife happy. (found two dozens roses that I could afford and took out the trash) I find meaning in my search for God. I find meaning in sharing God with others. I even find meaning in researching Molinism, though I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

I hope your life has meaning. I promise that it won’t be two weeks until the next meaningful post and it will be much shorter.